As US withdraws from the Paris pact, it’s time the world recognised the real climate leaders

Who is a climate leader? The Paris Agreement on climate change happened, in part, because of the bold political will of several world leaders, and in part for the United States, taking a legal form which would not require Congressional approval. Now that President Donald Trump has finally taken a decision for the US to exit the Agreement, it is time for the world to recognise the real climate leaders. India is one of them. But it needs to speak up.

In anticipation of the US withdrawal, at the G7 summit in Sicily, the six other members (and the European Union) reaffirmed their commitment to the Agreement. This week, China and the EU will announce that they are forging an alliance to deliver a “decisive response” against climate change and “lead the energy transition” to a low-carbon economy.

In November 2014, a similar statement issued by China and the US had also created the impression that they were the true climate leaders. Reality is less black and white. With a target of 2 degree Celsius, between 2011 and 2030, China, the EU and the US would together corner at least 38 per cent of the world’s total permissible emissions up to 2100. If the world targeted only 1.5 degree Celsius, then, by 2030, these three regions would consume 95 per cent of the entire world’s nearly century-long carbon budget.

With the US withdrawal, that carbon space would shrink even more and faster. Latest evidence shows the EU’s emissions increased in 2015. Renewables supply 30 per cent of Germany’s electricity (a huge share) but coal and lignite account for 40 per cent. China proposed in January that coal consumption would rise to 4.1 billion tonnes in 2020, even as it stakes its claim to being a global renewable energy leader. None of this is unvarnished climate leadership.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated India’s commitment to the Paris Agreement this week. Yet, there is still limited recognition of what India is already doing on the ground. It is an irony that China (the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter) becomes the climate leader, by default. Climate leadership is not a crown to be worn by only one country. Countries will be judged by actions, not words, just as Trump said. India must emphasise (loudly) the five pillars of its climate leadership in action.

One, policy. In 2010 India’s National Solar Mission commenced with a target of installing 22,000 megawatts (MW). At the time, India’s total installed capacity was 17.8 MW. The world’s leading solar countries were Germany, Spain, Japan, US and Italy. India was at 10th place. In 2014, India asked itself a simple question: How big can we get on renewables? And by early 2015, India announced that by 2022, it would install 1,00,000 MW of solar, 60,000 MW of wind, 10,000 MW of small hydropower and 5,000 MW of biomass-based electricity capacity.

There are sceptics, at home and abroad, who question whether the targets are too ambitious or whether India is capable of meeting them so soon. They might be right. After all, India is trying to do in less than a decade what took Germany more than two decades to achieve. But the targets have set a direction of travel, creating an attractive market, giving confidence to investors, even nudging policy planners to design an electricity system which could accommodate renewable energy, even if thermal power were squeezed out.

Two, programmes. In addition to policies, India has demonstrated its willingness and ability to scale programmes nationwide and rapidly, which serve to drive a shift towards cleaner fuels while also increasing energy access.

According to government data, 238 million LED lightbulbs have been distributed through an innovative programme of advanced market commitments, driving prices down from above INR 300 in 2014 to under INR 50 now. Another example: The Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme for LPG has become the world’s largest cash transfer programme, drawing in 176.3 million households, triggering both subsidy reform and access to cleaner cooking fuels.

Three, prices. Whereas many European countries pushed renewable energy through consumer subsidies, India adopted a reverse auction-based competitive bidding process for solar. That has meant that the lowest tariffs have dropped from INR 10.95 (USD 0.17) in December 2010 to INR 2.44 (USD 0.038) in May 2017. Competitive bidding in wind, introduced in February 2017, resulted in bids falling to INR 3.46. Can renewable energy prices fall any further? CEEW analysis shows that the cost of finance, rather than the cost of technology, accounts for the largest share of the tariffs — a challenge even greater in several developing countries. If India can find ways to reduce investor risks, and lower the cost of finance, it would hold lessons for others on how a combination of transparent bidding and publicly funded risk guarantees could drive a clean energy transition.

Four, productivity. Climate change is already impacting India, with increasing water stress and billions of dollars of lost agricultural output during this century. Could India increase agricultural production, while reducing water and energy intensity? Converting 15 per cent of India’s irrigation pumpsets to solar would create 20,000 MW of solar capacity. If various factors (cropping patterns, bank credit, etc.) align, CEEW’s analysis finds that 39 per cent of India’s districts would have a moderate to high potential of deploying solar pumps. Again, this has lessons for many other developing countries.

Five, partnerships. In November 2015, India and France launched the International Solar Alliance (ISA). The ISA plans to aggregate demand to drive prices down, scale up technologies currently available, and pool resources to invest in solar R&D. Thirty one countries have signed its Framework Agreement already. Among other initiatives, the ISA is seeking common risk mitigation instruments, to hedge risks across its membership and beyond in order to leverage limited public funds and crowd in large flows of private investment. We must acknowledge two realities. First, the rest of the world will have to continue to act on climate change, regardless of what the US does. Secondly, the mantle of climate leadership cannot be held by just one country.

For its level of income and per capita emissions, India is doing disproportionately more than many of the larger polluters. It must speak confidently about its actions and its leadership for other countries.

The writer (Arunabha Ghosh) is CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and co-author of ‘Climate Change: A Risk Assessment’ (2015) and ‘Energising India’ (2016)

According to Siegfried Hecker, former director, Los Alamos National Laboratory, U.S.,

“India has the most technically ambitious and innovative nuclear energy programme in the world. The extent and functionality of its nuclear experimental facilities are matched only by those in Russia and are far ahead of what is left in the US.”

India’s three-stage nuclear power programme was formulated by Dr. Homi Bhabha in the 1950s to secure the country’s long term energy independence, through the use of uranium and thorium reserves found in the monazite sands of coastal regions of South India. The ultimate focus of the programme is on enabling the thorium reserves of India to be utilised in meeting the country’s energy requirements. Thorium is particularly attractive for India, as it has only around 1–2% of the global uranium reserves, but one of the largest shares of global thorium reserves at about 25% of the world’s known thorium reserves. However, thorium is not economically viable because global uranium prices are much lower.

The country published about twice the number of papers on thorium as its nearest competitors, during each of the years from 2002 to 2006. The Indian nuclear establishment estimates that the country could produce 500 GWe for at least four centuries using just the country’s economically extractable thorium reserves.

As of August 2014, India’s first Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor had been delayed – with first criticality expected in 2015 – and India continued to import thousands of tonnes of uranium from Russia, Kazakhstan, France, and Uzbekistan. The recent India-Australia Nuclear Deal, Indo-US Nuclear Deal, India-Canada Nuclear Deal and the NSG waiver (Nuclear Suppliers Group), which ended more than three decades of international isolation of the Indian civil nuclear programme, have created many hitherto unexplored alternatives for the success of the three-stage nuclear power programme.

Dr. Homi Bhabha conceived of the three-stage nuclear programme as a way to develop nuclear energy by working around India’s limited uranium resources. Thorium itself is not a fissile material, and thus cannot undergo fission to produce energy. Instead, it must first be converted into the fissile isotope uranium-233 by transmutation in a reactor fueled by other fissile materials. The first two stages, natural uranium-fueled heavy water reactors and plutonium-fueled fast breeder reactors, are intended to generate sufficient fissile material from India’s limited uranium resources, so that all its vast thorium reserves can be fully utilised in the third stage of thermal breeder reactors.

In November 1954, Bhabha presented the three-stage plan for national development, at the conference on “Development of Atomic Energy for Peaceful Purposes” which was also attended by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Four years later in 1958, the Indian government formally adopted the three-stage plan. Indian government recognised that thorium was a source that could provide power to the Indian people for the long term.

Although India has only around 1–2% of the global uranium reserves, thorium reserves are bigger; around 12–33% of global reserves, according to IAEA and US Geological Survey. Several in-depth independent studies put Indian thorium reserves at 30% of the total world thorium reserves.

India is a leader of thorium based research. It is also by far the most committed nation as far as the use of thorium fuel is concerned, and no other country has done as much neutron physics work on thorium. The country published about twice the number of papers on thorium as its nearest competitors during each of the years from 2002 to 2006. Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) had the highest number of publications in the thorium area, across all research institutions in the world during the period 1982-2004. During this same period, India ranks an overall second behind the United States in the research output on Thorium. Analysis shows that majority of the authors involved in thorium research publications appear to be from India.

Stage I – Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR)

In the first stage of the programme, natural uranium fuelled pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR) produce electricity while generating plutonium-239 as by-product.

Natural uranium contains only 0.7% of the fissile isotope uranium-235. Most of the remaining 99.3% is uranium-238 which is not fissile but can be converted in a reactor to the fissile isotope plutonium-239.

Indian uranium reserves are capable of generating a total power capacity of 420 GWe-years, but the Indian government limited the number of PHWRs fueled exclusively by indigenous uranium reserves, in an attempt to ensure that existing plants get a lifetime supply of uranium. US analysts calculate this limit as being slightly over 13 GW in capacity. Several other sources estimate that the known reserves of natural uranium in the country permit only about 10 GW of capacity to be built through indigenously fueled PHWRs. The three-stage programme explicitly incorporates this limit as the upper cut off of the first stage, beyond which PHWRs are not planned to be built.

Stage II – Fast Breeder Reactors (FBR)

In the second stage, fast breeder reactors (FBRs) would use a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel made from plutonium-239, recovered by reprocessing spent fuel from the first stage, and natural uranium. In FBRs, plutonium-239 undergoes fission to produce energy, while the uranium-238 present in the mixed oxide fuel transmutes to additional plutonium-239. Thus, the Stage II FBRs are designed to “breed” more fuel than they consume. Once the inventory of plutonium-239 is built up thorium can be introduced as a blanket material in the reactor and transmuted to uranium-233 for use in the third stage.

The surplus plutonium bred in each fast reactor can be used to set up more such reactors, and might thus grow the Indian civil nuclear power capacity till the point where the third stage reactors using thorium as fuel can be brought online, which is forecasted as being possible once 50 GW of nuclear power capacity has been achieved. The uranium in the first stage PHWRs that yield 29 EJ of energy in the once-through fuel cycle, can be made to yield between 65 and 128 times more energy through multiple cycles in fast breeder reactors.

The design of the country’s first fast breeder, called Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), was done by Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR). Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd (Bhavini), a public sector company under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), has been given the responsibility to build the fast breeder reactors in India. The construction of this PFBR at Kalpakkam was due to be completed in 2012. It is not yet complete. A start date in 2015 has been suggested.

In addition, the country proposes to undertake the construction of four FBRs as part of the 12th Five Year Plan spanning 2012–17, thus targeting 2500 MW from the five reactors. One of these five reactors is planned to be operated with metallic fuel instead of oxide fuel, since the design will have the flexibility to accept metallic fuel, although the reference design is for oxide fuel. Indian government has already allotted Rs.250 crore for pre-project activities for two more 500 MW units, although the location is yet to be finalised. Because of the inherent danger in fast breeder reactors, there has been some talk of building the new ones underground.

Doubling time refers to the time required to extract as output, double the amount of fissile fuel, which was fed as input into the breeder reactors. This metric is critical for understanding the time durations that are unavoidable while transitioning from the second stage to the third stage of Bhabha’s plan, because building up a sufficiently large fissile stock is essential to the large deployment of the third stage.

Stage III – Thorium Based Reactors (TBR)

A Stage III reactor or an advanced nuclear power system involves a self-sustaining series of thorium-232-uranium-233 fuelled reactors. This would be a thermal breeder reactor, which in principle can be refueled – after its initial fuel charge – using only naturally occurring thorium. According to the three-stage programme, Indian nuclear energy could grow to about 10 GW through PHWRs fueled by domestic uranium, and the growth above that would have to come from FBRs till about 50GW. The third stage is to be deployed only after this capacity has been achieved.

According to replies given in Q&A in the Indian Parliament on two separate occasions, 19 August 2010 and 21 March 2012, large scale thorium deployment is only to be expected “3 – 4 decades after the commercial operation of fast breeder reactors with short doubling time”. Full exploitation of India’s domestic thorium reserves will likely not occur until after the year 2050.

Parallel approaches

As there is a long delay before direct thorium utilisation in the three-stage programme, the country is now looking at reactor designs that allow more direct use of thorium in parallel with the sequential three-stage programme. Three options under consideration are the Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS), Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) and Compact High Temperature Reactor. Molten Salt Reactor may also be under consideration based on some recent reports.

PM Modi is all set to embark on his first Japan visit as the PM tomorrow and the high speed bullet train project will be high on his agenda for discussions. The modern high speed bullet trains first originated in Japan in 1964. Japan is India’s biggest bilateral economic donor. Japan assisted India during the setting up of the Delhi Metro system. Therefore, ties between Japan and India extend beyond being ceremonial to being built on the foundation of concrete partnerships. Japan and India have the potential to create a more concrete partnership based on mutual trust and friendship. Friendship between Japan and India is all set to surge to a new higher level. The future is here now!

It is well known that projects such as: metro trains (MRTS-Mass Rapid Transit System), LRTS (Light Rapid Transit System), monorails, dedicated bus corridors, etc.; are in design, construction or feasibility study phase in numerous cities in India. It is therefore only reasonable that India must have high speed transit systems between the cities as well to make inter-city and inter-state transportation quick and safe.

Recently there were reports that India may opt for Maglev bullet trains (Magnetic Levitation) for the high speed rail network being planned for the country. This is a commendable decision given that India has an excellent opportunity to leapfrog into the next generation of bullet train technology simply because it does not have to replace any existing high speed network, problems that the developed nations in the world are facing. Maglev trains travel at higher speeds than conventional bullet trains due to reduced friction. The Maglev train typically gets lifted a few inches above the track when it races to its destination, thereby eliminating contact between the train and the tracks. It is a method of propulsion that uses magnetic levitation to propel vehicles with magnets rather than with wheels, axles and bearings.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is carrying out a joint study with India on the 534-km Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train corridor, is expected to submit its second report in November. Currently, the JICA and French railway are involved in the feasibility study of the Rs. 62,000 crore Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project. While the French report will focus on the project’s business development model, JICA’s study will cover alignment, scheduling, tariff, technology, traffic, funding pattern, environment and social impact, passenger profile, number of station among other aspects. A sum of Rs. 100 crore has been allocated in the Rail Budget for preparatory work of the bullet train project. The nations, France, Italy, China and Japan are competing to partner with India for the implementation of the project but China and Japan are the frontrunners in this race. While China is promoting low cost as its USP, Japan is pushing its higher safety records.

The argument that India is not yet ready to embrace high speed rail is irrational, misplaced and politically motivated. While it is admissible that not all will be able to afford travelling in a bullet train in the initial years, the consequent indirect benefits that will start to trickle in the near future far outweigh the costs associated with the building of this crucial infrastructure:-

Economic Impact

First of all, when Japan had planned the construction of bullet train network after World War II, there were similar arguments against it as we are now having in India. Japan’s per capita GNP back then was also very similar to what it is in India right now. Not only did the bullet trains become profitable in 3 years’ time in Japan, they made journey between important cities so quick that it transformed the economic scenario of Japan. The Japanese “Shinkansen”(bullet train) has had a significant effect on Japan’s business, economy, society, environment and culture. The time savings alone from switching from a conventional to a high-speed network have been estimated at 400 million hours, an economic impact of ¥500 billion per year.

Shinkansen connectivity has rejuvenated rural towns and villages that would otherwise be too distant from major cities. They have made remote Japanese towns and villages accessible — stimulating rural economies. They have also dramatically improved city life. In Tokyo you’re never far away from snow, beach and onsen.

You can well imagine how a similar network for India could infuse the much needed investment in our village economies making them far more accessible and nearer to cities than today. It could bring far more villages and towns in the ambit of the “satellite towns” concept. Yoshiyuki Kasai, Chairman of the Central Japan Railway Company says that India does not have the choice but it has to build the high-speed railway system to achieve higher growth rate. According to him, “High-speed railway makes travel time between cities shorter by several hours. Due to this, different cities are integrated into a single economic lifezone. The long-term economic and social impact of such systems will be huge.”

Promoting manufacturing and utilizing the demographic dividend– India’s transition to “world’s back-office” has helped only the educated and skilled youth of the country. India needs to change itself into “world’s manufacturer” to provide job opportunities to the biggest youth population in the world. India is in an advantage position to take up the leadership position in manufacturing at the cost of China for next 20–30 years, because of India’s demographic dividend which is available for next 20 years or so, before it turns into demographic liability. But, India has plains in interior of India where it can set up large-scale manufacturing bases without causing much environmental degradation. India needs to build infrastructure to connect interior of India to seaports through mega infrastructure projects. High Speed Rail is one of such projects which can accelerate India’s growth rate

India’s double-digit GDP growth– “Investment cycle” created by the High Speed rail will result in India making a major jump to the double-digit growth rate. Indian economy will be converted from Social sector focused Expenditure based economy with 4–5% growth rate and low value jobs to the Investment based double digit growth rate economy with high-value jobs helping India to effectively use the Demographic Dividend for next 30 years, before it turns into a Demographic Liability without major pension reforms.

Poverty alleviation-India’s expenditure-based poverty alleviation has been a failure against the investment-based growth. GDP through job generation against the one-time subsidy payouts have helped India to uplift record number of people out of poverty, year after year. As seen in Japan, HSR lines bring along with them investment and prosperity.

Job generation– Micro, small, medium and large-scale industries will benefit by the HSR. A company manufacturing nut and bolts to the company working on high tech steel will all get benefited, taking India’s manufacturing share to 25% of the GDP. It all depends on the government’s domestic content, technology transfer and competitive-bidding policies.

Corporate muscle-flexing– Investment in this sector will result in genesis of companies with unmatchable know-how and money power, which will go on to acquire companies and invest in this sector across the world. India’s investment in airports, space, petroleum, telecommunication, renewable energy etc. have created companies, mainly in private sector which have gone international and acquired companies worldwide:- e.g. GMR (Istanbul and Mactan-Cebu), GVK (Bali airport), Airtel (Africa), Indian Oil, ISRO, ONGC Videsh, Suzlon (5th-largest in the world).

Tourism– Access to the eastern and north-eastern states (Meghalaya, Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, West Bengal and Odisha), Kashmir and South Indian states will be hours of travel from days. Foreign and domestic tourists can cover more places in the same time, thus bringing wealth to more places. Tourism may emerge as a major source of Income, if enabling environment is created.

Efficiency- The delay time per train per year of the Japanese Shinkansen is only 6 seconds! Enough said!!

Safety

Personally, I am more for the Japanese “Shinkansen” than the lower cost Chinese version of it, due to Shinkansen’s best safety record in the world for high speed railways. Low cost is just a short term advantage while higher level of safety is a long term profitable bet according to me. Japanese bullet trains (Shinkansen) have the best safety record on the planet: beating conventional trains, automobiles and flying. They have served 7 billion passengers without a single passenger fatality due to a derailment or collision.
Japan was the first country to introduce an extensive bullet train system (1964). Since then, only one passenger has died as the result of an accident (involving the doors of a train). Trains now have a variety of systems and procedures to prevent this from happening again. The Shinkansen’s near-perfect safety record is remarkable considering that Japan is the most seismically active country in the world.

Shinkansens are wired into Japan’s earthquake early warning system. In most cases, a Shinkansen has time to brake before an earthquake arrives. While its automatic train control (ATC) keeps tabs on the distance to a train running in front and stops itself if necessary, the new Center-Fastened Brake Disc has high braking performance. The new braking system is also called an earthquake-triggered brake. When electric power is cut by an earthquake, the braking system detects it and automatically starts functioning. It also increases braking force applied to the disc by 15%. When the Great East Japan Earthquake hit in March 2011, 10 Shinkansen trains were speeding on a stretch hit hard between Fukushima and Iwate prefectures, including five trains running at 270 km/h. But all the trains were able to make an emergency stop and none of them derailed or rolled over. Another feature of the current Shinkansen is a fixed-speed travel device that automatically speeds up or slows down the train taking into consideration changing land conditions ahead on the line. The device stores in itself all data about steepness, bends and tunnels waiting down the line, calculates their impact on the running of a train and generates signals giving proper speed instructions. In normal times, Shinkansen trains are driven manually without the fixed-speed travel device online. But when the timetable is disrupted in bad weather, the device is switched on, allowing recovery from train delays much faster than before.

India needs bullet trains with similar systems as the northern plains lie on the mid-continental earthquake belt and so are prone to earthquakes.

Globally too, bullet trains have beaten other modes of transportation as the safest bet to travel.

Bullet trains will bring the much needed and additional dimension of safety in Indian Railways, especially when the country witnessed several severe train accidents in the previous year due to increasing passenger load, obsolete safety mechanisms and lack of coordination.

Environmental Impact

Bullet trains produce much less air pollution than automobiles, planes and conventional trains. Traveling the Tokyo-Osaka line by Shinkansen produces only around 16% of the carbon dioxide of the equivalent journey by car, a saving of 15,000 tons of environmentally degrading carbon dioxide per year.

Long-distance travel (air and rail) will move away from petroleum-based inflationary fuel to the electricity, whose real cost of production is decreasing and is non-inflationary, as India is one of the biggest producer of renewable energy in the world.

Rail Diplomacy

Like China, India too can have a chance at strengthening her economic and strategic partnerships with the neighbouring countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar by building high speed rail links for transportation across the border. This can lead to cross border integration in all aspects: cultural, economic, tourism, security, etc. International tourist circuits in South Asia on similar lines of European tourist circuits could be formed.

National Integration

India has multiple cultures and languages, as the rivers, mountains and forests have hindered the people to people contact. This has an impact even now as regionalism and communalism have an upper hand in national politics rather than patriotism. High speed railways will change that as India will move to a single identity and culture, similar to what happened in Japan after the introduction of bullet trains.

UPSC-2013 AIR-1 Gaurav Agrawal(IAS): Khelo India

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